Kevin Frisch: David Paterson swings and misses

I’m the first person to whine about all the special privileges state lawmakers get — from the taxpayer-funded mailings they use to tell taxpayers how much money they’re saving them, to the $170 per diem they receive when at the state Capitol (which would be like your boss giving you a daily bonus for actually showing up at the office).

But even I was surprised to find out that the governor — New York’s fourth-most powerful official (behind the Assembly speaker, whoever’s got the swing vote in the state Senate that day and the New York Lottery’s Yolanda Vega) — doesn’t get free tickets to the World Series when a home team is in it.

So it is that hapless Gov. David Paterson got a little ... um, happlesslier last week when a special counsel ruled he could face criminal charges for testimony he gave as part of an investigation into how he got tickets to Game One of last year’s World Series between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. (You wouldn’t have these problems, governor, if, like me, you were a Mets fan.)

It shows how far New York’s politicians have fallen in public esteem that someone would even think to question their presence at a game. You wouldn’t have heard anyone ask to see Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s ticket stub, or accuse New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay of being a gate-jumper. Heck, for Mayor Rudy Giuliani used to crash in the Yankees’ clubhouse, between wives Nos. 2 and 3, and no one said boo.

So I would have expected Paterson’s testimony to have gone something like this:

SPECIAL COUNSEL: Mr. Governor, how did it happen that you were in attendance at Game One of last year’s World Series?

PATERSON: I’m the flipping governor!

In fact, Paterson evidently expected this to be the case, too, according to the Associated Press.

“This was the first game of the World Series,” the AP quoted Paterson as saying. “It’s always a national event, like the Academy Awards or, you know, governor’s state address or something like that.”

Yeah, we all know how brutal ticket scalpers can be at those governor’s state addresses.

So Paterson may yet face charges, for perjury of all things. Or not. As David Grandeau, former head of the state’s lobbying commission, told AP reporter Michael Gormley (who must have swooned when he got this nugget in his notebook), “If everyone in that Capitol who lies is going to be charged with perjury, the district attorney better hire a lot more prosecutors.”

In fact, it’s unlikely charges will be filed. Since ascending to office in March 2008 following predecessor Eliot Spitzer’s call girl-related resignation, Gov. Paterson has endured rumors of past personal indiscretions; admitted to marital infidelities; presided over a whopping 9-percent state budget hike last year, a four-months-late budget this year and a state Senate coup that shut down the government for a month; mishandled the appointment of former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s successor, angering both the Clinton and Kennedy families; suggested withholding New Yorkers’ income-tax returns, taxing their sodas and forcing them to buy costly new drivers’ licenses; faced allegations that he had tampered with a witness in a staffer’s domestic-abuse case; was charged with lying about World Series tickets; and was forced to abandon his bid for election this fall to stave off calls for his immediate resignation.